I had the pleasure of speaking at the Atlanta SQL Server User Group on the evening of Monday, April 11th. It's about a four hour drive from my home in Nashville. So when I did the math for the time needed to check in at the airport, take the short flight, get a car, and so forth, I decided that the car trip was better than the flight.
It was my first time to meet with the Atlanta group and I have to say that I was impressed. Not only were many MVPs present - familiar names like Robert Volk and Geoff Hiten - but there was also a large and strong attendance. The group is led by Douglas McDowell, a recent MVP in his own right and a prominent figure at SolidQualityLearning.
One thing that I have learned about healthy user groups is that the leadership is strong and deep. By that I mean that there is also more than just one leader there to help things along. The Atlanta group, in this example, has an entire leadership counsel that manages the group.
A couple questions came up at the user group meeting. First, there were some questions at how query plan caching works. As it turns out, Ken Henderson has an excellent posting on this very topic. Check out his answer to this question at http://blogs.msdn.com/khen1234/archive/2005/06/02/424228.aspx.
A perennial question that I get whenever I speak is "How do I become a book author?" A good starting place for this question is the O'Reilly & Associates website - http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/intro.csp.
I hope you find these links useful!
Cheers,
-Kev
